The present invention relates to a handling device for laying electrical cables by helicopter.
This method of laying electrical cables, although especially effective and quick, at the present time entails a problem of unwinding the cables through passages in supporting structures which are delimited by a closed contour.
FIG. 1 illustrates a typical example of this problem.
The pylon consists of a mast 10 supporting the pulleys 11, 12, 13, 14 holding the electrical cables. In the example illustrated, the pulleys 11 to 13 corresponding to the three phases are suspended on a supporting structure 15 formed from two arms 16, 17, to the end of which the pulleys 11 and 12 are attached, these arms being braced by oblique beams 18 and 19 joined at their top by a horizontal transverse beam 20.
As can be seen from this illustration, it will be easy to deposit the cables on the pulleys 11, 12 and 14 by helicopter, but the placing of the central phase will come up against the problem that, to deposit the cable on the central pulley 13, it has to be passed through the closed contour delimited by the beams 18, 19 and 20.
For this purpose, for this central phase the unwinding has to be carried out on the outside of the supporting structure, and then this is partially disassembled in order to introduce the cable manually into the passage and deposit it on the pulley 13.
This manipulation, in addition to the safety problems which it involves, considerably slows the rate of laying cables by helicopter, since manual intervention will be necessary at each pylon.